How ‘Selling Sunset’ Creator Adam DiVello Brought Realtors Into Reality Television
deadline.comWhen Adam DiVello first pitched Selling Sunset to Netflix, the plan wasn’t to turn an unscripted show about The Oppenheim Group—a high-end real estate firm in West Hollywood—into something akin to the Real Housewives franchise.“I don’t think we ever knew exactly what it was going to be,” admits DiVello about the show’s 2019 launch. “I know when I approached the Oppenheim brothers about being on the show, they were very hesitant.
They didn’t want to be like a Bravo-type, so to speak, with no offense to Bravo. They just didn’t want to be on a show where there was constant fighting.
I promised and said, ‘No, I’m going to make it about real estate and these high-end homes you guys sell in Los Angeles.’ Our first one was a $40 million house, which is crazy.
But of course, I told them we are going to follow their personal lives and see what happens.”It’s the “see-what-happens” part that turned Selling Sunset into an engrossing spectacle that has only gotten better with age. (The show just dropped its fifth season in April.) Though it may have been DiVello’s goal to focus on the insanely priced homes on Hollywood’s famed Bird streets, everything changed with the Season 2 arrival of Chrishell Stause—a former soap star from Days of Our Lives whose very public split from actor Justin Hartley (This is Us) became a delicious storyline the following year.“The minute that Chrishell walked in and didn’t click with [agent] Christine Quinn, we knew it was going to take a direction in that [Real Housewives] way,” admits DiVello. “Where it escalated to, I don’t think anybody could have foreseen that.”At times, it seems like Jason and Brett Oppenheim have their work cut out for them; all they can do is sit quietly by and watch Stause and
Read more on deadline.com
